I actually didn't realise that it was largely non-fiction - essays and musings - and a few sRead via NetGalley.
This was, overall, a delightful read.
I actually didn't realise that it was largely non-fiction - essays and musings - and a few short stories as well. Liu has been writing for decades, and these pieces were mostly written between 1999 and 2010 (one is from 1987; one is 2012, one 2014, two from 2015). There's a panegyric to Ken Liu's writing, some considerations of the differences between fantasy and SF as genres, reflections on the experiences of Chinese SF fans, and some thoughtful reflections on how SF concepts might relate to the "real world". The fiction is what I expected of Liu - thoughtful, science- and engineering-heavy, with the consequences for individual humans and collective humanity a vital aspect.
I'm very glad these pieces have been translated into English.
Merged review:
Read via NetGalley.
This was, overall, a delightful read.
I actually didn't realise that it was largely non-fiction - essays and musings - and a few short stories as well. Liu has been writing for decades, and these pieces were mostly written between 1999 and 2010 (one is from 1987; one is 2012, one 2014, two from 2015). There's a panegyric to Ken Liu's writing, some considerations of the differences between fantasy and SF as genres, reflections on the experiences of Chinese SF fans, and some thoughtful reflections on how SF concepts might relate to the "real world". The fiction is what I expected of Liu - thoughtful, science- and engineering-heavy, with the consequences for individual humans and collective humanity a vital aspect.
I'm very glad these pieces have been translated into English....more
This review will have some spoilers for the first book, The Atlas Six. And you really need to read the first one. Do not cRead courtesy of NetGalley.
This review will have some spoilers for the first book, The Atlas Six. And you really need to read the first one. Do not come to this with no prior knowledge.
This is an example of one of those books where very quickly I am pretty sick of the bullsh!t of every single character, impatient with their childishness and arrogance and lack of ability to see beyond their own selfishness... and yet I kept reading. Partly for the characters - I like Libby (and let's not analyse that particular sentiment), and to my amusement I like Nico, and of course I like Gideon; Reina I am intrigued by. The others I find very frustrating if occasionally intriguing. But I also keep reading because I just have no real idea where Blake is going with all of this. I don't know whether the characters are going to actually come together, or not; whether they will work with Atlas, or not; whether the world is going to end, or not. And so despite my impatience and frustration - all, it must be said, indications that Blake is skilful at creating characters; I don't tend to waste emotions on 2D characters - I devoured this book, and am now also impatient for the third book. This situation cannot be left where it is and I need to know how it resolves.
So the book opens with Libby gone, her colleagues initially assuming she's dead and then realising that she's just... gone. Using his abilities, Ezra has dropped her in the past, hoping to save her or save the world or... honestly who really knows, Ezra is so messed up. The others, back in the Library mansion, are meant to spend their year doing basically an Honours project, researching their own thing. As may be of little surprise to those who've read the first, mostly they just don't bother because have you ever met another group of incredibly smart people who collectively had so little interest in actually doing the work they're expected to do? Reina is not included in that indictment. And I guess Nico isn't either but he's Nico, and like all the others is definitely running to his own agenda. It will also come as no surprise that things go badly for pretty much everyone at different stages of the story. They don't cope very well with that.
There's an enormous depth, here: Blake hints at a lot with Atlas, and with Dalton, and with Reina and Parisa in particular. There's also terrifying potential for what could eventually occur. Both of these novels have been very well-paced; Blake uses the multiple-narrator mode beautifully to explore the variety of characters and give hints at what's in their brains. I think, actually, that it's using that format which makes these novels so very compelling.
Merged review:
Read courtesy of NetGalley.
This review will have some spoilers for the first book, The Atlas Six. And you really need to read the first one. Do not come to this with no prior knowledge.
This is an example of one of those books where very quickly I am pretty sick of the bullsh!t of every single character, impatient with their childishness and arrogance and lack of ability to see beyond their own selfishness... and yet I kept reading. Partly for the characters - I like Libby (and let's not analyse that particular sentiment), and to my amusement I like Nico, and of course I like Gideon; Reina I am intrigued by. The others I find very frustrating if occasionally intriguing. But I also keep reading because I just have no real idea where Blake is going with all of this. I don't know whether the characters are going to actually come together, or not; whether they will work with Atlas, or not; whether the world is going to end, or not. And so despite my impatience and frustration - all, it must be said, indications that Blake is skilful at creating characters; I don't tend to waste emotions on 2D characters - I devoured this book, and am now also impatient for the third book. This situation cannot be left where it is and I need to know how it resolves.
So the book opens with Libby gone, her colleagues initially assuming she's dead and then realising that she's just... gone. Using his abilities, Ezra has dropped her in the past, hoping to save her or save the world or... honestly who really knows, Ezra is so messed up. The others, back in the Library mansion, are meant to spend their year doing basically an Honours project, researching their own thing. As may be of little surprise to those who've read the first, mostly they just don't bother because have you ever met another group of incredibly smart people who collectively had so little interest in actually doing the work they're expected to do? Reina is not included in that indictment. And I guess Nico isn't either but he's Nico, and like all the others is definitely running to his own agenda. It will also come as no surprise that things go badly for pretty much everyone at different stages of the story. They don't cope very well with that.
There's an enormous depth, here: Blake hints at a lot with Atlas, and with Dalton, and with Reina and Parisa in particular. There's also terrifying potential for what could eventually occur. Both of these novels have been very well-paced; Blake uses the multiple-narrator mode beautifully to explore the variety of characters and give hints at what's in their brains. I think, actually, that it's using that format which makes these novels so very compelling....more
I received this book from the author, who is a friend of mine... for which reason if I didn't like, I just wouldn't have written a review!
It's no secI received this book from the author, who is a friend of mine... for which reason if I didn't like, I just wouldn't have written a review!
It's no secret I'm a fan of Tansy's work. Hilariously, I was a fan long before I met her: I read Splashdance Silver at uni, and THEN I met her a convention and was completely overwhelmed and THEN she turned out to be, like, a real person.
ANYWAY.
This lovely novella has a lot of Tansy Trademarks. The story skips along at a smart pace, with the occasional aside to explain something. There is a very good line in banter - the sort of repartee that can only exist in stories because no one can be that good on their feet, and is one reason why I like reading these sorts of stories because I dream of being that fast on my feet. It's a little bit dark, and honest about human nature while ultimately striking a hopeful note.
Tansy has a good line in using kind-of-historical settings for her work. The Creature Court series used her wealth of knowledge about the Roman Republic and Empire. Here, she's using Victorian England, and giving it a fantastic twist - love potions are real, fairies are too but they've been banished, magic is real. She even uses a governess, and I know for a fact that she prefers Wuthering Heights over Jane Eyre (she's wrong). Chapter headings lean into Georgian/Victorian styles, with headings like "In Which Toadstools Are False, Storybooks Are Essential, and a House has its Secrets" - which also implies the gothic overtones, because houses are creepy.
Overall, highly enjoyable, and I will take more stories about Flavia and her wards any day.
Merged review:
I received this book from the author, who is a friend of mine... for which reason if I didn't like, I just wouldn't have written a review!
It's no secret I'm a fan of Tansy's work. Hilariously, I was a fan long before I met her: I read Splashdance Silver at uni, and THEN I met her a convention and was completely overwhelmed and THEN she turned out to be, like, a real person.
ANYWAY.
This lovely novella has a lot of Tansy Trademarks. The story skips along at a smart pace, with the occasional aside to explain something. There is a very good line in banter - the sort of repartee that can only exist in stories because no one can be that good on their feet, and is one reason why I like reading these sorts of stories because I dream of being that fast on my feet. It's a little bit dark, and honest about human nature while ultimately striking a hopeful note.
Tansy has a good line in using kind-of-historical settings for her work. The Creature Court series used her wealth of knowledge about the Roman Republic and Empire. Here, she's using Victorian England, and giving it a fantastic twist - love potions are real, fairies are too but they've been banished, magic is real. She even uses a governess, and I know for a fact that she prefers Wuthering Heights over Jane Eyre (she's wrong). Chapter headings lean into Georgian/Victorian styles, with headings like "In Which Toadstools Are False, Storybooks Are Essential, and a House has its Secrets" - which also implies the gothic overtones, because houses are creepy.
Overall, highly enjoyable, and I will take more stories about Flavia and her wards any day....more
I do not love mountaineering. I do not like watching it, I do not like reading about it.
I loved this novella.
(Note: I am friends with the publisher, I do not love mountaineering. I do not like watching it, I do not like reading about it.
I loved this novella.
(Note: I am friends with the publisher, but that hasn't impacted on my attitude.)
There is SO MUCH going on in this story, I'm not sure where to start. Obviously I've started with the fact that it involved mountaineering... but that doesn't tell you much. This isn't just a story about climbing mountains, it's about an unbeaten mountain on a harsh planet, and it's about the joys of climbing as well. I don't understand those joys, but I got a glimmer of an idea about them from reading this.
There's only so much mountaineering I would read, though, even from the greatest writer. What really sucked me in here is both the relationship between the characters and the voice of the narrator herself, Aisha. Her relationship with her wife, Maggie, seems straightforward and then slowly reveals all of those complexities and unexpected difficulties that characterise real relationships. Their interactions were loving and troubling and selfish and selfless... how they would react to each other was always a bit ambiguous, to me, and that definitely contributed to the tension.
Aisha, as the narrator, is the person in whose head the reader spends most time, and she's an appropriately complex person. I loved that Gunn gives us flashbacks to establish a pretty profound backstory for her after we already have a sense of what she's experiencing in the now. She's dealing with old injuries - mental and physical - and she has to watch her beloved risk herself on that damned mountain, while also carrying around some old guilt and questions about identity and worries for the future. Basically I just wanted to sit there and pat her hand to make her feel a bit better about the world.
This is a novella, so it doesn't take long to read. Which is a tragedy, but it also means it's tightly paced - a few slower, character-driven parts, but always with the knowledge of time passing urgently in the story's now. Gunn has put a lot of thought into the universe-building that just gets lightly touched on - just enough to make this seem very well-realised. I can well imagine more stories in the broader universe... and possibly more set on Icefall itself. Which I would read, but I may need a bit of space before doing so.
Definitely recommended.
Merged review:
I do not love mountaineering. I do not like watching it, I do not like reading about it.
I loved this novella.
(Note: I am friends with the publisher, but that hasn't impacted on my attitude.)
There is SO MUCH going on in this story, I'm not sure where to start. Obviously I've started with the fact that it involved mountaineering... but that doesn't tell you much. This isn't just a story about climbing mountains, it's about an unbeaten mountain on a harsh planet, and it's about the joys of climbing as well. I don't understand those joys, but I got a glimmer of an idea about them from reading this.
There's only so much mountaineering I would read, though, even from the greatest writer. What really sucked me in here is both the relationship between the characters and the voice of the narrator herself, Aisha. Her relationship with her wife, Maggie, seems straightforward and then slowly reveals all of those complexities and unexpected difficulties that characterise real relationships. Their interactions were loving and troubling and selfish and selfless... how they would react to each other was always a bit ambiguous, to me, and that definitely contributed to the tension.
Aisha, as the narrator, is the person in whose head the reader spends most time, and she's an appropriately complex person. I loved that Gunn gives us flashbacks to establish a pretty profound backstory for her after we already have a sense of what she's experiencing in the now. She's dealing with old injuries - mental and physical - and she has to watch her beloved risk herself on that damned mountain, while also carrying around some old guilt and questions about identity and worries for the future. Basically I just wanted to sit there and pat her hand to make her feel a bit better about the world.
This is a novella, so it doesn't take long to read. Which is a tragedy, but it also means it's tightly paced - a few slower, character-driven parts, but always with the knowledge of time passing urgently in the story's now. Gunn has put a lot of thought into the universe-building that just gets lightly touched on - just enough to make this seem very well-realised. I can well imagine more stories in the broader universe... and possibly more set on Icefall itself. Which I would read, but I may need a bit of space before doing so.
The good things: * Reclaim the women! I am always in favour of a book that hiI read this book courtesy of NetGalley.
I am ambivalent about this book.
The good things: * Reclaim the women! I am always in favour of a book that highlights a woman who has either been forgotten, or whom history has portrayed in an unfavourable-because-patriarchy light. This book largely does that, going into details about Marie's life, highlighting the reasons for the decisions that she made as well as the importance of those actions, not just her womb. These are really important things. * It's accessible. This is intended for a general readership: there are no footnotes, it opens with a list of people the reader can refer back to when the titles etc get to be too much, and it usually balances complex foreign policy decision-making with ease of reading.
The slightly uncomfortable things: * The lack of footnotes etc means it's not the most detailed of historical research: there's not that many primary sources directly used, and no other historians are referenced, which makes me a bit queasy. * There are some editing mistakes. Sentences that lack of a primary verb, probably because there are so many clauses that it's easy to get lost; sentences where it's unclear whether one person with multiple titles, or several different people, are being discussed. * Marie's apparently deliberately decision to remain single after James V's death is lamented as sad for a woman in her 30s. But... she's a widow twice over, she has the disastrous example of her mother-in-law to show how badly things can go for a widowed queen with an infant monarch. Why couldn't this be a sensible political choice? Why couldn't this be a relief to a woman whose life has been tied to the idea of marriage for more than two decades, usually not at her own decision? No evidence to suggest that she regretted this, and so... attributing emotions is a fraught business. It shouldn't be done.
The negative things: * At one point, Clegg describes Marie's daughter Mary as having various ailments, and suggests they may be dismissed as nothing more than an anxiety related disorder. Uh. That's... not good. * The way Marie's whole life is framed around men. Now I understand that to some extent, with the biography of a powerful woman in the sixteenth century this is unavoidable; her male relations were always going to play a huge part, especially early on, and any husband likewise. However, it felt like a lot of space was spent on men and their doings, sometimes only tangentially connected to Marie's life. Perhaps this was for added context, but it just served to detract from making Marie the focus. The greatest example of this is the title. In a book of nearly 220 pages, Henry VIII dies on p140. Marie was on a list of possible wives but got away; she got in his way to some extent around the issue of young Mary marrying Prince Edward... but to call her the Scourge of Henry VIII is ridiculous. I guess it made a good title? But I was expecting to discover that she had actively, and over a long period, skewered Henry's ambitions in the north. Yeh not so much.
Look, overall, for people wanting to find out more about Marie of Guise, this isn't a bad option - not bad at all, in fact. Just beware that it's by no means perfect.
Merged review:
I read this book courtesy of NetGalley.
I am ambivalent about this book.
The good things: * Reclaim the women! I am always in favour of a book that highlights a woman who has either been forgotten, or whom history has portrayed in an unfavourable-because-patriarchy light. This book largely does that, going into details about Marie's life, highlighting the reasons for the decisions that she made as well as the importance of those actions, not just her womb. These are really important things. * It's accessible. This is intended for a general readership: there are no footnotes, it opens with a list of people the reader can refer back to when the titles etc get to be too much, and it usually balances complex foreign policy decision-making with ease of reading.
The slightly uncomfortable things: * The lack of footnotes etc means it's not the most detailed of historical research: there's not that many primary sources directly used, and no other historians are referenced, which makes me a bit queasy. * There are some editing mistakes. Sentences that lack of a primary verb, probably because there are so many clauses that it's easy to get lost; sentences where it's unclear whether one person with multiple titles, or several different people, are being discussed. * Marie's apparently deliberately decision to remain single after James V's death is lamented as sad for a woman in her 30s. But... she's a widow twice over, she has the disastrous example of her mother-in-law to show how badly things can go for a widowed queen with an infant monarch. Why couldn't this be a sensible political choice? Why couldn't this be a relief to a woman whose life has been tied to the idea of marriage for more than two decades, usually not at her own decision? No evidence to suggest that she regretted this, and so... attributing emotions is a fraught business. It shouldn't be done.
The negative things: * At one point, Clegg describes Marie's daughter Mary as having various ailments, and suggests they may be dismissed as nothing more than an anxiety related disorder. Uh. That's... not good. * The way Marie's whole life is framed around men. Now I understand that to some extent, with the biography of a powerful woman in the sixteenth century this is unavoidable; her male relations were always going to play a huge part, especially early on, and any husband likewise. However, it felt like a lot of space was spent on men and their doings, sometimes only tangentially connected to Marie's life. Perhaps this was for added context, but it just served to detract from making Marie the focus. The greatest example of this is the title. In a book of nearly 220 pages, Henry VIII dies on p140. Marie was on a list of possible wives but got away; she got in his way to some extent around the issue of young Mary marrying Prince Edward... but to call her the Scourge of Henry VIII is ridiculous. I guess it made a good title? But I was expecting to discover that she had actively, and over a long period, skewered Henry's ambitions in the north. Yeh not so much.
Look, overall, for people wanting to find out more about Marie of Guise, this isn't a bad option - not bad at all, in fact. Just beware that it's by no means perfect....more
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